Salut! Soundings

Contact Colin Randall

Out with the old: a Fleet Street lament

Few jewellers would think to put a gang of thieves in charge of security, and it is unlikely that the average china shop owner takes a raging bull to work.

Listening to the speechmaking at yet another Daily Telegraph leaving party, I thought of two possible exceptions to the rule: the jeweller contemplating an insurance scam and the crockery seller who wants a complete clear out of stock so he can replace it with plastic.

The popular view among journalists and, I suspect, some observant readers is that a chilling new regime is intent on destroying most of what was good about the DT, a goodness that was evident even to those who disagreed with every editorial opinion expressed by the paper.

But many more decent journalists need to be purged before the supposed transition from great newspaper to soulless, undistinguished rag becomes a reality.

We should also bear in mind that journalists always whinge about proprietors, editors, deputy editors, news editors and others above them, only to muse wistfully about the Good Old Days when such characters leave to be succeeded by harsher specimens.

However, the venom displayed in last night's speeches, and especially in one made by a reporter who regarded his final few months at the paper as the nightmarish sequel to a dream he thought he had fulfilled on joining, was impossible to overlook. There were plenty of outsiders present at what was a memorable Fleet Street event, but they did not account for all the cheers and warm applause that greeted the embittered words.

People still at the paper, whether thriving or coasting or hanging on by fingertips, lapped it up.

Tempting as it was to cheer him on, I thought my former colleague - Stewart Payne, a good man and an exemplary reporter as it happens - probably overdid it.

It is a long step from disapproval of the thought process dictating key appointments (and celebrated sackings, mine included though that preceded the arrival of most of the new mob) to blanket condemnation of what the present editor, Will Lewis, calls his "mission".

Since this posting appeared in its original form, Guardian Mediahas remarked that some of those upset by the cultural revolution at the Telegraph have drawn parallels with the battle between Gollum and the hobbits in Lord of the Rings, or even likened events to Year Zero under the Cambodian dictator Pol Pot. Lewis cheerfully recognises that "there are some people who seem to not like (sic) what we are doing".

But as long as respectable reporters, specialists and production staff remain, and the management is not so daft as to let Matt take his cartoons elsewhere, the Telegraph will continue to produce valuable journalism. It will just do so a little less often.

Charles Moore, a former Telegraph editor who has somehow survived as a columnist in company he may find unappealing, acknowledged as much in light-hearted fashion with his speech honouring the other departing journalist, David Sapsted.

There is a compelling if imaginary sporting analogy. Let's say Class Act FC, successful purveyors of beautiful flowing football, suddenly fall under less cultured direction. Great players and worthy servants alike are shown the door; in comes a procession of steely, joyless robots. Provided the team keeps on winning, or winning often enough to stay at or near the top, there is unlikely to be much complaint from those holding the purse strings and essentially not all that fussed about football in the first place.

Filling large parts of the Telegraph with agency or agency standard copy, owing little or nothing to noble traditions of style and thoroughness, may not always produce pretty results. But it's probably cheaper and, in the short term, effective.

And the dissidents left behind, or jeering from outside, ought to reflect on this, if they still believe in conspiracy rather than cock-up.

One representative of the New Order, someone apparently regarded slightly more kindly than his cohorts, was present last night. Having heard the speeches and seen the reaction, will he have scuttled back to the office with alarming reports of discontent and shocking morale among the Old Guard?

He will have done no such thing if the conspiracy theorists are right. On the contrary, he will have returned to work this morning with a spring in his step, honestly able to reassure anyone with a need to know that the strategy is having the desired effect.

Comments

Out with the old: a Fleet Street lament

Few jewellers would think to put a gang of thieves in charge of security, and it is unlikely that the average china shop owner takes a raging bull to work.

Listening to the speechmaking at yet another Daily Telegraph leaving party, I thought of two possible exceptions to the rule: the jeweller contemplating an insurance scam and the crockery seller who wants a complete clear out of stock so he can replace it with plastic.

The popular view among journalists and, I suspect, some observant readers is that a chilling new regime is intent on destroying most of what was good about the DT, a goodness that was evident even to those who disagreed with every editorial opinion expressed by the paper.

But many more decent journalists need to be purged before the supposed transition from great newspaper to soulless, undistinguished rag becomes a reality.